


I Wanna Hold Your

by Nny



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom
Genre: 5+1 Things, Coming Out, Fake/Pretend Relationship, M/M, Mutual Pining
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-01
Updated: 2019-06-02
Packaged: 2020-04-06 04:47:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19055524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nny/pseuds/Nny
Summary: Five times Clint held Bucky's hand, and one time he held somethin' else entirely.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> For flawedamythyst and kangofu_cb who are the best kind of enablers.

Clint slides and slips and slurps out of the guts of the alien hell beast, and Bucky cannot quite believe it but the guy is still smiling. Before he's even made a conscious decision about it, Bucky is stalking over to him, fists clenched and scowl familiar and firmly in place. Clint staggers to his feet, just about, and then loses his balance again in a puddle of slime and splatters back to the ground, giggling a little not quite under his breath.

"Oh god," he says, lifting a hand and watching ribbons of fluid drip slowly to the ground, "this is the most disgusting thing, fuck."

He looks up, then, grinning wide and open and kinda green and sticky around the edges, and Bucky has always thought that Clint has a beautiful smile, but this side of almost certain death - of certainty, actually, for those three horrific minutes before Hulk ripped off the thing's grotesque head -

It's the best thing he's ever seen. It's the only thing he _wants_  to goddamn see, any more, which is a hell of a revelation to have in the middle of the wreckage of a New York street.

"You're a fuckin' idiot," he says, as a means of relieving his feelings, and it's one he uses enough that Clint doesn't even look remotely fazed. He just holds one hand up, juices slithering down his arm to pool at his elbow and drip, and smiles like he's some kinda contestant for Miss USA.

Bucky pictures Clint in a purple gown with a Miss Iowa sash and a pair of elbow length gloves. It ain't complete without his bow, and when he adds that in -

It's gonna take some contemplating, that's all. And it sure as hell ain't gonna be now.

Bucky considers letting Clint just sit there, punishment for being a reckless asshole. Honestly, though, if he started instituting consequences every damned time, he'd never get any other damned thing done. He holds out his hand, wishing he trusted the Hydra workmanship enough to offer the wipe-clean metal; there's no way he's gettin' viscera into the workings of his arm, though, not so soon after the last time.

Clint, to his credit, flicks as much of the goop off his arm as he can manage before taking Bucky's hand, letting Bucky haul him up to standing. His feet are still uncertain under him, and that combined with his long limbs are makin' him look like some kinda baby deer.

"C'mon, Bambi," he says, keeping hold of his hand so the guy doesn't fall on his ass as he tows him across the street. "Let's find you somewhere you can get cleaned up."

*

If Clint Barton, covered in slime and still smiling, is somethin' to behold, then when he's all freshly laundered and fluffy - wrapped up all warm in sweats and a hooded sweater - he's _devastating_. Bucky hooks a left rather than settling in next to him, way they usually do, and sits himself down across the kitchen table instead, concentrating hard on carving even slices through his apple's rosy skin.

"You are a pair of shirkers," Stark says, coming into the kitchen, just a tiny spatter of green for artistic effect across the side of his neck. Bucky's not entirely sure how their relationship works, but he's bettin' Stevie appreciated it.

"Lies," Clint says, somehow getting the words out around a spoon. "I ain't never shirked anyone in my life, not without consent."

"He's calling you lazy," Bucky says, "and he's gonna want to watch his mouth."

"Yeah," Clint says. He's dropped the spoon back into his cereal now, and life would be a hell of a lot easier, Bucky thinks, if Clint could stop smiling near him. "I got _eaten_ , I get to be excused."

"What about him?" Tony asks, waving a hand at Bucky. "He didn't get to make like a sour patch kid."

Clint adopts a serious tone. "Excuse you, that's my emotional support soldier, I'm gonna get him a little vest."

"You're gonna get his fist someplace you don't want it," Bucky grumbles, and the other two exchange a look and then collapse into laughter, loud and graceless.

Bucky can feel the heat rising into his cheeks, dull brick red that's only a little bit hidden when he ducks behind his hair. They used to joke like this all the time, back in the army, but back in the army he was too cold and tired and dirty to even think about being sweet on anyone, and the seventy years since - well, he's got out of the habit. He's not sure he's ready to pick it back up.

"You're done cleaning, then," he says abruptly, cutting across the mood, and Tony makes a face and fishes a mug out of the fruit bowl, filling it with coffee right up to the brim.

"Yes, and we're wanted in the conference room just as soon as Steve's had a shower, and FRIDAY's had the time to put together Clint's greatest hits - or, as I like to categorise it, the blooper reel. If I heard him right, the video's entitled 'Next Time We're Letting You Get Et.'"

It's dumb as hell how Bucky's stomach tightens up fractionally in automatic protest at that - or stronger, maybe. Denial. He crowds in a little closer than he maybe ought to, following Clint out of the room, and slides into the chair next to him around the table. Tony, who is an asshole, barks; Bucky glares him down until he subsides and melts into the seat next to where Steve is standing, looking exhausted and taking deep breaths like his therapist had to teach him.

"Okay," he says, taking a long breath in through his mouth and letting it out slow and exasperated through his nose. "Okay, I am genuinely a little upset at how often I have to say this, for the record, but _getting eaten by monsters is not an Avengers-approved strategy._ "

"Spoil my fun," Clint grumbles, and dammit, now Bucky's the idiot smiling.


	2. Chapter 2

The next morning, Tony is wearing a shirt that says JONAH PROTOCOL in obnoxious letters, and he high-fives Clint on the way to the coffee pot. It's the third pot of the day, already, because Clint has kind of had a night of it; being swallowed by a giant beast and having to cut yourself out with your boot knife is apparently pretty effective nightmare fodder, who woulda thought.

He's feeling that kinda exhaustion-haze that comes with shitty nights, heavy and headachey and slow to process; it takes him a while before he notices that Bucky's even in the room, let alone the shirt he's wearing. Soon as he works it out, Clint chokes coffee out through his goddamn nose, which is frankly hell on the sinuses.

"The _hell_  are you wearing?"

Bucky grabs the hem of his deep red shirt, pulling it out a little to look down on the lettering, EMOTIONAL SUPPORT SOLDIER emblazoned in white across his chest.

"It's amazing what you can get on overnight delivery," Tony cuts in, and Bucky shrugs a shoulder, shoving a corner of toast into his mouth.

"I lived through the war," he says. "You don't turn down free shit, even if it's from assholes."

When Clint snorts out a laugh through his poor abused nose, Tony making offended noises in the background, Bucky gives him kind of a half-smile, one of the ones he hoards close to his gorgeous chest - which is outlined perfectly by the lines of his shirt, by the way. It's a full-on assault on the senses, and Clint is having trouble swallowing. It's fine. He'll get over it. He always does.

It's an odd sort of day. The wind's always up, this high, but it's bringing with it a fine spattering of rain that that feels a little unfair this late in May. He kinda wants to go out on the roof, but when it rains he likes the kind that at least puts some effort in. He thinks about heading for the range, instead, but then Bucky slouches onto the couch and pats the cushion beside him, holding out a controller, and Clint figures that might as well be it for the day.

Bucky's a physical player, leaning into it. He likes racing games, games where no one dies; he has this long-term love affair with MarioKart that Clint is always happy to indulge. They start a grand prix, Bucky hauling Bowser around and Clint selecting Princess Peach, and pretty soon there's a tense silence broken only by video game music and Bucky's occasional outbursts of violent swearing. There's something kinda charming about the way that Bucky cheats, slapping at Clint's hands and occasionally attempting to haul him into a headlock, like this is how he always used to cheat - at card games, or whatever they did in the dark ages - back when he was playing with Steve.

Clint'd be easier about it - would lean into it and enjoy the physical contact - if it didn't put him basically into the brother box right alongside Captain America, because brotherly's not where he's aiming to be.

Clint has just plowed Bucky off the side of the Rainbow Road - cackling helplessly at the swearing and failing to pull out in time to avoid going over himself - when his view of the screen is abruptly interrupted by Steve's huge shoulders. He's sat himself on the coffee table right in front of the screen, and Bucky calls him the sort of names that'd come back really soon after they'd started hanging out again.

"Buck," Steve says, and he's got this little line between his eyebrows that usually means he has concerns.

"Steve," Bucky answers flatly, but Clint's pushed pause and won't let him ignore whatever this is like he clearly wants.

"I - er -" the sideways look Steve gives him has Clint sliding off the couch, ready to head for the door, but Steve shakes his head and waves him back to his seat again. "No, it's probably best that you're here."

"Should I be worried?" Clint asks, his voice as light as he can get it, but even that makes Steve balk.

"No, no, there's nothing - it's just that FRIDAY found these. Kinda thought you should know."

They're nothing much - they _ought_ to be nothing much. Just a couple grainy photos from some online blog, Bucky hauling Clint around by the hand; the phone camera really caught the slime's shade of lurid green. It's the speculation underneath that Steve's probably talkin' about, though.

"They think we're knockin' boots?"

Clint sometimes forgets that Bucky's not a regular guy. Sometimes manages to overlook the decades of awful that've bisected his life. Only then he says something, uses some slang so sideways from Clint's frame of reference that he's knocked back a little, reminded viscerally of how far Bucky is from home.

"I just wanted to know how you wanted to swing with this," Steve says, low and intent and focused entirely on Bucky. Bucky's face is doing things that makes Clint want to slide over the edge of the couch again, pretend he was never here; every way he wants to react requires levels of consent he's not prepared to ask for in front of Steve, even to just give the guy a hug.

"What do you mean?" Bucky asks, and there's something catching in his voice.

"Well if you're -" Steve looks between them, awkward and uncomfortable. "If you _are_ , and it's important, than I guess it's as good a time as any to come out as gay. I figure the media's a little easier if you break the news yourself. Save you staying locked up in the tower forever so no one finds out." He looked wry. "Especially since now they're maybe gonna be looking for evidence you ain't straight."

"Um -" Clint says, and his voice is a little high-pitched, and he's not expecting Bucky's warm hand to close over his, but it sure as hell manages to quiet any protest that might've been lodged in his throat.

"And if I am." Bucky's voice isn't just catching now, it's caught, rough, snarled on hooks. "If I am, is that -"

Steve gapes at him for a second and then lunges forward, wraps his arms around Bucky.

"I oughta kick your idiot head in," he says, which seems like it's answer enough, 'cos Bucky curls his arm around Steve and claws metal fingers into the back of Steve's shirt, hauling him as close as they can get.

He doesn't let go of Clint's hand, though.


End file.
